Hope and a sense of loss at Labour’s election victory | Letters

Voting on Thursday proved a harrowing experience for Wayne Osborne and his wife. Plus letters on the election outcome from Mike Pender, Dr Stephen Riley, John Bailey, Michael J Walsh, Ruth Pickles, Cyril Duff and Ian Grieve

We often talked politics with our young daughter after the Tory win in 2010. She was five years old but we talked to her about it, just as my great-grandfather talked to me about the Labour party, which he had been part of in 1915 and onwards (Keir Starmer hails ‘sunlight of hope’ as Britain wakes up to Labour landslide, 5 July). His words stayed with me. I hoped our words would stay with our daughter, just as his words shaped my political views and my worldview. Words hold power and meaning.

When my wife and I approached the polling station on Thursday afternoon, she said quietly: “This would have been Abi’s first time to vote in a general election.” Those words hurt her as she spoke. I welled up, but the resolve to vote the correct way was strong; it would be in Abi’s memory. Because she died with leukaemia in September 2020 just after her 15th birthday, in a children’s hospital wing that had been built in the 1940s. It had only recently obtained some decent beds and observation machines, and it was a place desperate for funding, but with fantastic, hardworking, deeply committed staff.

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